


Emotions

by TheCatsTales



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: 100 Themes Challenge, Avengers Family, Crack, De-Aged!Harry, Feels, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-01
Updated: 2018-03-08
Packaged: 2019-02-09 05:26:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12881091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCatsTales/pseuds/TheCatsTales
Summary: A de-aged Harry is adopted by Hawkeye and Agent Coulson. Shinanigans ensue.100 prompts, theme emotions.





	1. Birth

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my attempt at curing writers' block. 100 emotions prompts that have been sitting in my notes for months that I'm finally getting around to using. The aim is to write at least one every day. Ideally, I'd like to complete the entire list by Christmas, but we'll see how successful that is! It will be a series of connected drabbles but they won't happen in chronological order or have an overarching plotline. Hopefully, this will get me past my writers' block and I can finally finish writing the second half of the next chapter for The Path Less Travelled. 
> 
> There is no real timeline for the fic. It takes place at some point post-Avengers but pretty much ignores canon beyond that point. Other canon events may or may not occur; we'll see what happens because I have literally no plan of any sort for this, I'm making it up as I go. It is mostly Harry Potter canon compliant (just not epilogue compliant) but the HP verse will not be mentioned much.
> 
> Some background information for the fic:  
> •Harry was de-aged post-war. He still has hazy memories of the war but, being a toddler when he is found, can't articulate them to the Avengers/SHIELD - all they know is that he remembers a bad past.  
> •The Marvel universe is a separate universe from the Harry Potter universe; Harry ended up in the Marvel universe at the same time as he was de-aged.  
> •Harry still has his magic.  
> •The Avengers rescued him from a HYDRA base, where he ended up when he changed universes, and presume his magic and trauma are a result of HYDRA experiments.

SHIELD prepared its agents for almost anything they might encounter in the field. Gods, aliens and mystical Cubes of Doom had, admittedly, been pushing things to the extreme end of the oh-shit-o-meter, but Clint felt they had coped reasonably well. It hadn't been that different to the Budapest Incident, really, just fewer bullets and more aliens.

What SHIELD training had not prepared him for were pregnant women. Really angry, heavily pregnant, heavily _armed_ HYDRA women. Well, woman. Singular. But she was armed, angry and ~~pregnant~~ dangerous enough to count as at least two women.

Also, Clint was 90% certain she was in labour because fuck his life and HYDRA's craziness and Fury's "a single strike team: in, intel, out, simple" mission brief. Nowhere did his mission brief mention helping crazy HYDRA lady's give birth. Clint would eat his bow _and_ his quiver if he didn't end up playing reluctant midwife before this damned mission was over. Not helping a pregnant lady and leaving a kid in HYDRA's clutches would only result in a disappointed Captain America face, which would lead to a you-disappointed-Captain-America disappointed Phil face, and Clint hated disappointing Phil.

Plus, HYDRA was bad and should not be allowed near children. Clint knew this. In fact, Clint knew this better than anyone except Phil. That did not make him feel any better when, half an hour later, he was kneeling between the legs of a sedated HYDRA agent (trying not to put weight on his left knee because, in labour or not, crazy HYDRA lady was a damned good shot), swearing at HQ for not having any medical staff on hand to give advice. Seriously, it took less than a day for them to unearth a team of scientists to consult about alien tech but they couldn't get hold of a doctor in thirty minutes. This is why people became supervillains, Clint was sure.

"If I remind her to breathe one more time, she is going to shoot me and it will have nothing to do with HYDRA and SHIELD," Clint growled at the babbling agent on the other end of the comm.

"She's armed?!" the agent yelped in alarm.

"What? No, of course she's no- Ow, fuck! Stop _kicking_ ," Clint swore at HYDRA agent, shifting so his injured knee was more difficult to reach. She was too drowsy and weak with sedation to do any damage but having open wounds kicked hurt, dammit. "Look, neither of us want to be in this situation but we can't go anywhere until retrieval get here, so the least you could do is cooperate and make both our lives easier," Clint said, rather reasonably in his opinion. The earful of abuse he got, in Russian, said crazy HYDRA lady was not on board with that idea.

The experienced SHIELD agent almost wept with relief when he heard the calm, matter of fact voice of a midwife start issuing orders over the comm. Orders he could follow. 

He lost a shirt to the cause and got a kick to the face that might have broken his nose, but he eventually sat back with an exhausted sigh, a newborn baby swaddled in his shirt and held against his bare chest. The HYDRA agent was unconscious and restrained by his feet, but he honestly couldn't bring himself to care about her at that moment. The kid was safe and, as far as his medically ignorant self knew, well and that was all he cared about just then.

"Tell Fury I am _not_ adopting this one," he muttered when the retrieval team finally arrived, handing the baby over to one medic as another helped him stand and limp onto the Quinjet. "I already have one. This one is for him to sort out."

The archer rested his head back with a relieved sigh as his leg was numbed for cleaning and stitches. A soft smile spread across his face as he thought of Phil and Harry waiting for him at home - or the base if Phil was working. He couldn't wait to get back, see his family and then sleep for a solid fourteen hours. The miracle of birth was fucking exhausting.


	2. Enthusiasm

"Show some enthusiasm, Tony," Pepper scolded as she pulled on a pair of thick woollen gloves.

"Yeah Tony, show some enthusiasm," Clint smirked, making sure Harry's fluffy reindeer hat was secure before helping the toddler put his boots on.

"I am enthusiastic. I'm full of enthusiasm. Who doesn't want to die of hypothermia in the snow?" Tony said, eyeing the parka Bruce held out like it was going to leap forward and bite him.

"It's not that cold, Stark," Steve said, rolling his eyes. The super-soldier smiled adoringly at Harry's frown of concentration as the toddler tried to pull his own gloves on.

"Sorry Capsicle, people who spent seventy years frozen alive do not get to judge other people's opinions on the temperature."

"Tony!" Pepper's tone switched from indulgently exasperated to apologise-or-suffer fast enough to give Tony whiplash.

"But Pep, it's _cold_ ," Tony whined.

"JARVIS, what is the current temperature outside?" Pepper asked sweetly.

"It is 25°F, Miss Potts," the AI answered promptly.

"And how long would it take Tony to freeze to death?" Pepper continued.

"With adequate clothing, the risk of death by exposure is minimal, Miss Potts," JARVIS replied, because Tony Stark did not build a stupid AI and JARVIS already knew who the winner of this argument would be. Besides, he was created to care for and protect Mr Stark, even if that meant saving the man from himself on occasion by 'betraying' him to his friends so someone would drag the genius out of his lab and into the fresh air once in a while.

"C'mon Stark, Harry's really looking forward to playing in the snow for the first time. Do you want to be the only one to miss it?" Clint wheedled. 

Any reply Tony would have made was cut off as a high-speed missile in tiny human form collided with his knees, chanting "Unca Tony, Unca Tony!" and holding his arms up beseechingly.

"Unca Tony, look!" the toddler insisted as he was picked up, shoving a hand into the billionaire's face. A hand wearing a tiny, red and gold Iron Man gauntlet glove, complete with an LED repulsor that would light up when clapped.

Tony did not melt. He did not. Self-declared genius billionaire (ex)playboy philanthropists did not melt at wide, emerald-eyed toddlers who were showing off their new Iron Man merchandise like it was the best thing they had ever seen. They did not.

Ok, so he might have melted a little, but only when Harry starting giggling delightedly at the repulsor blast noise his gloves made when he clapped his hands.

"Unca Tony, snow," Harry said, wriggling to be put down so he could run over to the window and stare out at the white blanket covering the city.

"Alright, fine. I'm coming," Tony said, snatching the parka out of Bruce's hand like it had insulted his mother. "But I'm not going to enjoy it," he muttered.

All promises of not enjoying it had been thoroughly forgotten several hours later, when a smug, victorious Tony returned to Avenger's Tower with a chilly but ecstatic Harry sitting on his shoulder. He smirked as he held the elevator door for a sopping Clint. An unnecessary gesture with JARVIS controlling all the electronics in the Tower, but one that put him in prime position to gloat as Clint tried to shake the remaining snow out from the back of his jacket.

Tony had won the snowball fight, of course. Never let it be said that Tony Stark couldn't turn any situation to his advantage, even if that meant using a toddler against a team of cold, snow-covered superheroes out for revenge.

"Shut up, Stark," Clint grumbled.

"Aw, c'mon Legolas, show some enthusiasm," Tony smirked.


	3. Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit late but I had a hard time thinking of something to write for this one, then it turned out longer than I expected once I did start writing. Still, I haven't gone to bed yet so I'm still counting this as day 3, even if it is now 2am.
> 
> I'm not entirely sure what this is or even if I like it, but this is what happened when I started writing. It took me so long to come up with something to write, I just ran with it once I had half an idea. So, sorry if it makes no sense or is terrible.

Love had long been something of an abstract concept to Phil. 

He loved his country, he loved his job, he loved the idea of Captain America and the ideals he stood for. He hadn't loved a person for a very long time. He had loved his parents when they were alive, he thought, but his father had died when he was nine and his mother had followed only a couple of years later. He didn't remember either of them particularly well and he loved the memories of them more than he loved them as people, now. 

The first person he remembered feeling anything like love towards was Nicholas Fury. It had been a platonic, familial love, but still love of a sort.

The man had quickly recognised Phil's potential, even as Phil himself had been trying to find his place in the world, to find something he could do to make a difference and leave his mark on the world. The then Deputy Director had taken the young, newly recruited Agent Coulson under his wing, guiding him through the intricacies of life as an agent of SHIELD until Phil had found himself at the top of the food chain, only one step below the new Director Fury himself. 

He knew it wasn't merely altruism on Fury's part. Of course he did. Fury benefitted as much from having a loyal, dependable righthand-man who already knew how he operated as much as Phil benefitted from the years of guidance and the newfound ability to run his operations the way he preferred, only taking orders from the very top of command. He was grateful nonetheless. The Director had become a treasured friend, family in all but blood, as much as he was a respected superior.

Over the years SHIELD had become a surrogate family for him, the way it did for many of their agents. The work was demanding, often dangerous, and sometimes dull enough to bore even the most hardened operatives to tears, but they took care of their own. They pushed and encouraged their agents to reach their full potential and made sure it was all worth the effort they demanded. They didn't judge people's pasts, only their present and what they could become in the future.

Phil had run with that philosophy - that anyone could find their place in SHIELD's ranks if they were willing to let go of their past and try - and used it to recruit a carny-turned-reluctant-mercenary who wanted to do something more with his abilities. It turned out to be one of the best decisions Phil had ever made, and not just because it gained SHIELD an archer of almost unparalleled ability.

Love and romance had always been an abstract concept to Phil before he met Clint Barton. The archer wormed his way into the centre of Phil's life almost without the senior agent noticing. In fact, he really hadn't noticed just how much of his time was spent with Clint until Fury had asked him if they would save the Housing team a job and just asked for a shared room if they were going to spend all their time in each others' anyway. It hadn't been the most conventional way of asking a partner to move in, but then little about SHIELD or their relationship was conventional.

Thanks to SHIELD, Phil knew both the platonic love of friends, some closer than others, and the romantic love of a partner he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. However, it was because of that same organisation that he had never expected to know the love a parent had for their child. Not that it was something he thought about often, as it had never been a realistic option for him. It wouldn't be fair to adopt a child into a family they could so easily lose in the line of duty. Even if he and Clint would live long enough to retire - something he had given a lot more thought since being stabbed through the chest by an alien intent on conquering the world - neither of them had a work schedule that was conducive to raising a child, nor a workplace that would welcome a child tagging along with their parents in the absence of a babysitter. 

It had been a surprise, then, when he and Hawkeye had been called in by Fury only to be presented with a child who needed a home but could not be placed with a normal family. Mainly for the child's safety, in case HYDRA tried to reclaim or eliminate the experiment that fell into enemy hands, explained Fury, but also to both monitor and keep secret the child's potentially dangerous abilities.

Had it been anyone other than Nick Fury telling Phil that the tiny, timid three-year-old was potentially dangerous he wouldn't have believed them. As it was, he trusted that the Director, as manipulative as he could be, would not exaggerate the danger a child presented for the sake of keeping a secret that could be preserved in other ways. A well-founded trust it turned out, as less than an hour after meeting him and Clint, Harry had a meltdown that destroyed six windows and disabled all the electronics in a ten-foot radius.

Destructive temper tantrums aside, Harry was an adorable kid who was eager to please once he warmed up to people. It hadn't taken long for the two agents to agree to adopt him, leaving Clint to play with the child while Phil sorted out the paperwork and negotiated all the practicalities that had made him reluctant to adopt in the first place. It seemed it had taken even less time for them - and the rest of the Avengers (and Fury too, though he would never admit it) - to love the toddler.

Nobody was sure exactly what HYDRA had done to Harry in the time he spent with them, even after seeing several more outbursts of his abilities. His abilities ranged from the relatively familiar (telekinesis was not an entirely new concept to SHIELD) to the somewhat worrying (frying several of SHIELD's EMP resistant devices), but Phil and Clint had made it excruciatingly clear that any attempts to run non-medically necessary tests more invasive than simply observing Harry's outbursts would be shut down swiftly and painfully. Since the meltdown in SHIELD's base, the most destructive thing Harry had done was silence a beeping toaster oven in Stark's kitchen, so neither protective parent saw any reason to subject Harry to the prodding and poking of overenthusiastic SHIELD scientists. 

(There had also been the Pink Coat Incident that no one talked about. It hadn't been destructive, per say, but it had put Fury on the warpath that day, even if most people didn't know and daren't ask how the sombre Director came to be sporting a bright pink coat. It had also been the day they discovered that Harry was afraid of loud dogs and did not like people shouting. Phil never did ask what happened to the coat but Clint did have pictures.)

Phil smiled as he watched Clint showing Harry how to hold a child-sized bow and nock an arrow. He wasn't sure (though he had his suspicions) exactly where Clint had got the tiny, toddler-sized archery set because it certainly wasn't a store-bought toy, but he couldn't bring himself to care too much. Clint would sooner shoot himself than let Harry get hurt, so Phil was content to watch the two people who mattered most to him bonding with each other. 

Though he might have a quiet word with Stark about what constitutes appropriate children's toys. Or have a word with Pepper, who would pass that word along to Tony in a manner the inventor might listen to. 

Phil might have been older than most when he first started to understand what love felt like, but thanks to SHIELD he was now fairly well versed in its various forms. And people wondered why he loved his job.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't actually know anything about Agent Coulson's past and only vaguely know Hawkeye's, so I might have completely mangled it. Oh well, if I have I'm just going to sweep all that under the 'non-canon compliant' rug :p


	4. Hate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a late chapter because my wifi stopped working yesterday, so it's just been sitting on my computer waiting for BT to get their act together. I should be posting another chapter, the one for today, later tonight provided my internet survives that long!

There were few things Steve hated more than HYDRA. In fact, HYDRA might be the thing he hated most in the world. Everything he would have said he hated more - the endless, pointless wars people seemed determined to wage, the suffering of innocent people and the people who oppressed them just because they could - HYDRA had a hand in. 

Nothing HYDRA touched survived untainted.

When his strike team had found a child imprisoned in a HYDRA lab he had been horrified. It had been his first encounter with physical evidence of HYDRA's willingness to experiment on children. Not just a child, but a toddler that was two or three at the most - barely more than a baby. The possibility that the boy had been born into HYDRA's clutches, had never known a life other than that of a lab rat, turned Steve's blood cold and made him boil with rage.

If the rest of that base had been raided less delicately than usual, nobody commented. Nor had anyone mentioned the rather more battered than usual captives that the Captain and his team had handed over. 

There had been lots of comments on the child that Steve had eventually, reluctantly relinquished to Medical. He had sat with the child throughout his examination and stayed until he fell asleep, before eventually being shooed out of the room by the medical team. Despite the tests and the questions, nobody could explain how or why HYDRA had been experimenting on the three-year-old.

Steve hadn't expected to see the child again after handing him over to SHIELD's care. He had planned to enquire after the boy, to find out what happened to him, but he had expected to hear that the ever-efficient SHIELD had found a home for him and that he would live as normal a life as possible from then on. 

What he had not expected was to return from a run to find the child sitting on the floor of the Avengers Tower penthouse living room with Hawkeye. Nor had he expected Agent Coulson to placidly explain that the child - Harry, now Harry Coulson - had been adopted by Clint and himself and would be splitting his time between their apartment and Avengers Tower.

It was an arrangement Steve had no argument with. What better way to ensure Harry got to have the life he deserved than to be personally involved? Life with the Avengers may not be entirely normal but Steve was sure Harry would want for nothing, being surrounded by honorary aunts and uncles and having two of the best men Steve knew as his parents.

Alas, Harry's childhood was not the plain sailing Steve had rather unrealistically hoped for.

For a start, none of the Avengers actually knew what to do with a child, with the surprising exception of Bruce. Tony and himself had had plenty of children thrust at them for publicity stunts but neither knew what to do other than not drop a child that was thrown at them. Pepper liked kids but had no experience with them, though she seemed bent on learning almost as quickly as Harry's two new fathers were. Natasha seemed almost _afraid_ of kids. 

Bruce, on the other hand, looked like a child-rearing wizard next to the rest of them. He easily directed Harry's attention and possessed an uncanny ability to sense and head off an oncoming tantrum (Steve was sure that if word ever got out that Bruce had a running streak of _zero_ tantrums on his watch, the Hulk could take a backseat; tantrum deflection would be declared Bruce's new main superpower). 

Still, they learned. It was a steep learning curve and they hit a few stumbling blocks along the way but eventually, they were all, if not expert babysitters, then at least experienced Harry-sitters for the nights when not even Agent Coulson's schedule juggling abilities could avoid both parents working the same nights. Even Natasha learned to relax around the toddler and could handle being left with him for the night.

Sadly, babysitting issues were not the biggest problem Harry faced. Whatever had been done to him in that base had left its mark on the child's psyche, which generally manifested as outbursts of power or nightmares - or both, on particularly bad nights.

That is how Steve found himself sitting on the sofa in the Avengers' shared living room at three in the morning, watching Harry scribble away at a colouring book while the TV played some garishly bright and cheerful kids' programme. Phil and Clint were away working on the same mission, so Harry was spending the night in Avengers Tower. As Steve had already been awake and in the gym, dealing with his own nighttime demons, when JARVIS had alerted the team to Harry's nightmare the super soldier had volunteered for the nightly Harry-watch.

Steve had suffered his many losses at the hands of HYDRA. They had taken his best friend, stolen seventy years of his life and condemned him to a future where all the people he knew were dead or mere shells of who they had once been. Despite that, if he were asked which of HYDRA's crimes was the worst he would, without hesitation, answer that it was what they had done to Harry.

He had known during his many attempts to enrol in the army what he was signing up for. Admittedly, none of the propaganda or training had mentioned watching someone peel their face off or spending seventy years in the snow, but still, he had known that as a soldier he would pay a heavy price for serving his country. He had welcomed that, as long as he could also make a difference and help improve the world.

Harry was a three-year-old kid. He didn't even understand what had been done to him, let alone why HYDRA had done it. All he knew was that it had hurt and he had been so, so scared for such a long time. Steve would never forget the sight of the toddler sitting up in bed screaming as he clutched his forehead - clutched the lightning bolt shaped scar that Steve shuddered to think the origins of. Too many nights had been spent like this, sitting with a pale, haunted Harry who would keep colouring until sleep finally overwhelmed him again, and hoping that this time the sleep would be restful and not end in nightmares.

So yes, Steve hated HYDRA more than he hated anything else on Earth. But hatred wasn't productive. All hate could do was destroy. So he channelled his hatred into action, disrupting HYDRA's plots, trying to stay one step ahead of them, and rebuilding what they destroyed. Right now, that meant sitting with his honorary nephew, watching overly cheerful cartoons and waiting for the toddler to climb into his lap and fall back to sleep. Then he could get in touch with Fury and see if there were any new HYDRA raids he could take on.


	5. Triumph

Clint grinned triumphantly, ignoring Natasha's eye roll. 

He was competitive, so sue him. That was his little boy out there kicking ass. Not literally, SHIELD and Phil (mostly Phil) had a strict no combat of any kind on Fair Day rule, but figuratively Harry was kicking the other kids' butts. He had won all of his races so far and only had one more left to go.

"Y'know, some people would say it's unfair letting the kid who lives with the Avengers compete," Bruce said, ignoring the wary looks nearby agents were giving him as he smiled and waved to Harry, who was sitting by the starting line with the other kids.

"Some people are idiots, then," Clint said scornfully. "Do they think he absorbed super-soldier serum by osmosis just sharing a building with Captain America?"

"Osmosis wouldn't be the- never mind," Bruce said, shaking his head at Clint's abuse of scientific terminology.

"But really, who thinks spending the odd night in the Tower would give a four-year-old an advantage in an egg-and-spoon race?" Clint continued indignantly.

"Calm down, Mama Bird, nobody is accusing your chick of cheating," Tony drawled, collapsing onto the grass where the three Avengers were sprawled. "Besides, you're missing the important question: what the hell kind of race is the egg-and-spoon to be having at a SHIELD event?"

"It was introduced by Agent Carter, back before SHIELD became SHIELD. Agents' kids didn't always have the chance to make friends with normal kids or get involved in normal childhood activities, so she established the SHIELD Fair Day, where kids could meet the kids of other agents and have friends they wouldn't always be leaving behind. We still use the activities she introduced for the fair," Clint answered, earning some incredulous looks. "What?"

"You ok there, Legolas? You might have swallowed the encyclopaedia of SHIELD by accident," Tony said, eyebrows raised.

"What, I'm not allowed to be interested in the organisation I work for?"

"You spent two days hiding in the firing range so Fury wouldn't make you run the induction course for the newbies when Hill was off," Natasha said, arching an eyebrow.

"That was a long time ago! I've changed since then. Now I-" he stopped, deflating at the disbelieving looks the others sported. "Yeah, ok, so I might have asked Phil the same question," he admitted.

"Where is Agent, anyway? I thought he'd be here to watch Sparky wipe the floor with the other kids," Tony said, peering around at the crowds. He smirked at the sight of a helpless Steve, covered in face paint and glitter, being mobbed by small children, but could see any sign of Coulson.

"He's running the Captain America memorabilia stall, like always," Clint answered absently, eyes focused on the mop of black hair making its way to the starting line. "Look, Harry obstacle race is starting!"

"There's a Captain America _memorabilia stall_? And Agent runs it?" Tony said with the absolute delight of a snarky friend being handed weeks worth of ammunition to use on two people.

"Yes, always has been. Now pay attention," the archer insisted, dragging the group over to the barrier keeping the spectating families out of the racing lanes.

The group of superheroes whistled and cheered when the starting whistle blew. Heedless of the looks they were getting from surrounding families, they cheered Harry on as the boy rushed through a popup tunnel and jumped over child-sized hurdles, neck-and-neck with one of the bigger kids but showing no sign of giving up.

"Harry! Harry! Harry!" the group chanted as the two boys reached the last sprint to the finish.

"That's my boy!" Clint crowed as Harry toppled over the finish line a hair ahead of his rival. Not waiting for the official announcement of the winner, the superheroes descended on the panting boy, scooping him up into congratulatory hugs.

"C'mon you, let's go show Papa your trophies," Clint said, smug, triumphant smirk firmly in place. "Then we're getting victory ice cream. Five scoops for the five races you've won."

Later that night Clint would regret giving his son so much ice cream, as Phil left the task of getting a buzzing Harry into bed to him. Neither of them truly minded the four-year-old's hyperactivity, though, because today had been the first time Harry had been out in public without clinging to an Avenger, and that was a triumph of its own.


	6. Soft

"It's soft," Harry said running his fingers through the chinchilla's fur, oblivious to the look of trepidation on Fury's face. "Feel," he insisted, holding the startled looking animal out to the Director.

"Yes, it's very soft," Fury agreed, running a finger over the chinchilla's head while using his other hand to press the intercom button. "Hill, can you get in here please?"

"Yes, Director? And Harry," Agent Hill said, entering the office and stopping in surprise at the sight of the child fussing over a chinchilla. "What have you got there, Harry?" she asked the boy while giving Fury a look that asked 'what is he doing here?'. 

Fury raised an eyebrow back. 'I don't know, how did he get past you?' he countered silently as Harry babbled enthusiastically about how soft his newly acquired pet was.

'I...don't know,' said Hill's furrowed brow. 'Do his parents know he is here?' asked her pointed look.

God, Fury hoped so. The last thing he needed was a frantic Barton, who would be closely followed by a frantic Avengers team, tearing his base apart looking for his missing son. Or worse, a frantic _Coulson_ who would search for his son in that calm, methodical way of his, traumatising everyone he came across until Harry was found.

"Harry, do your daddies know you are here?" Hill asked, seeing the Director was too caught up in his nightmare of a calmly rampaging Coulson to be of any use.

She sighed when Harry shook his head, clutching the chinchilla to his chest tightly. "Ok, do you want to come sit outside with me while Director Fury lets your dads know where you are?" she offered, shooting Fury a look that said 'Phone. Now!' when the man failed to move.

Harry shook his head again, sitting down at Fury's feet and petting the chinchilla with a determined look.

"Ok," Maria repeated slowly, giving Fury a helpless shrug when he shot her a what-the-hell look. She wasn't going to be the one to forcibly remove the kid when he didn't want to go; she liked having hair, not being green and being in a room that wasn't broken or on fire, thank you very much. They may not have been able to work out what HYDRA had done to the kid but they did know that upsetting Harry gave them a front-row seat to some of his more interesting abilities.

"Coulson's on his way," Fury said, hanging up the phone. "So, kid, how did you get in here?" he asked, not overly hopeful of receiving a comprehensible answer. "Why aren't you with your dad?"

"Soft now," was Harry's only answer, shoving the chinchilla into the startled Director's lap.

"I'll just..get back to work," Hill said with remarkable composure at the sight of _the_ Nicholas Fury engaged in, and losing, a battle of wills with a stubborn three-year-old who was refusing to take the chinchilla back until Fury pet it and agreed it was soft. Unfortunately for her, her composure didn't quite last until the office door had closed so Fury heard her laughing.

Making a mental note to assign Hill all the Stark paperwork for the next twelve months, Fury finally managed to get Harry to take the chinchilla back. Who gave the kid a chinchilla, anyway? It seemed like a weird pet to be carrying around the base. Although, Stark would probably think it hilarious to set the kid loose in a SHIELD base with a chinchilla if Harry was going to insist everyone he met had to pet the damned thing.

A polite knock at the door pulled Fury from his wandering thoughts. Phil didn't wait for acknowledgement, just stepped into the office and made his way over to Harry.

"There you are, Harry. Where did you...Harry, why do you have a chinchilla?" Agent Coulson asked, raising his eyebrows at the small, silvery mammal he knew his son hadn't had thirty minutes ago. 

"Not 'chilla. Soft," Harry said. Phil's brow furrowed, trying to decode the Harry-speak into something that made sense. He had gotten pretty good at inferring meaning from Harry's half-formed, uninformative sentences but he had to admit that he was lost on this one.

"Soft? Alright, Harry, why do you have a...soft?" he asked, giving the amused Director a look that promised retribution should he laugh.

"Felt yucky. Now's soft," Harry said, tightening his hold on the squirming animal.

Nope, Phil still wasn't getting it. "The chinchilla felt yucky?" he asked, mystified.

"Not 'chilla," Harry insisted. "Man was yucky. Is soft," the boy said, holding the chinchilla out to Phil who took it, instincts kicking into overdrive.

"Man...Harry, what man felt yucky?" he asked, trying to keep the urgency out of his tone so Harry didn't think he was in trouble.

"The yucky man," Harry said unhelpfully. He reached out to pet the chinchilla's head. "Now he feels soft."

Phil and Fury looked down at the furiously squirming chinchilla and then up at each other. 

"Harry," Phil said in the perfectly calm, even tone he used when everything had gone to hell in a hand-basket around him and he was expected to sort it out, "is this the yucky man?" he asked, brandishing the now barking chinchilla.

Harry nodded.

"Fuck," Fury said. 

"Swear jar," Coulson said automatically, mind whirling. His son had turned someone into a chinchilla? He could do that? _Why_ had he done that? Could he _undo_ it? Privately, Phil agreed with Fury's succinct summation of the situation, though he didn't approve of that language being used around Harry (he would like his son to make it to first grade without the vocabulary of a veteran agent if at all possible, thank you).

"Really? We have a guy, probably one of our agents, who is living life as an excessively fluffy rodent and you're worried about my _language_?" Nick said disbelievingly.

"Harry's at an impressionable age."

The Director stared at Phil, then sighed, resigning himself to paying Harry's college fees via the swear jar (he comforted himself with the knowledge that Barton and Stark would be coughing up even more than him, having no filter and being around the kid so often). "So what do we do with him?"

"I'm not sure. Labs might want him but I doubt they can do anything to change him back. Even FitzSimmons aren't that good," Phil mused. "Harry, does the chinchilla have a name?"

"Not 'chilla," Harry said long-sufferingly as though he thought the adults were all very slow on the uptake. "Is _soft_."

"Right. Soft," Phil muttered. Why was there nothing in the agent handbook for this? 'What to do when your son turns an agent into a fluffy rodent' would be a nice guidebook to have right now. Maybe he'd write it, in case this ever happened again.

"Harry, why did you bring...soft to Director Fury?"

Harry shrugged. "He's bad." And Fury takes care of bad guys, Phil completed mentally. That answered the why, if not the how or who.

"Why is he bad, Harry?"

"Wanted to take me away from daddy. Said I had to go back," Harry said looking upset. "Felt yucky."

"Back? Back where, Harry?" the agent asked, though really there was only place anyone could threaten to take Harry back to, wasn't there? Phil suddenly felt a lot less considerate towards the now thrashing, barking rodent.

"To the bad people," Harry said, bottom lip trembling. 

Fury and Coulson exchanged a dark look, Phil dropping the furry HYDRA agent into Fury's lap so he could scoop Harry up and assure his son that they wouldn't let anyone take him anywhere. Fury didn't protest holding the rodent this time, pinning it in place less than gently with one hand, as he called Agent Hill to inform her he needed a cage to detain the animal.

To Hill's credit, she only hesitated for a second before acknowledging the order and following through. She even managed to not question anyone's sanity when she was told to put the chinchilla in a cell and have it under armed guard twenty-four-seven. Fury wasn't risking Harry's power shorting out the CCTV feed to the cells and giving the HYDRA agent a chance to escape or kill himself before he could question him. Not that they knew whether the transformation was reversible or not. Though Fury had a hard time sympathising with the HYDRA agent, even if they were trapped in a chinchilla's body for the rest of their life.

It would make the guy damned hard to interrogate, though.

As it turned out, Fury didn't have to devise a way to interrogate a chinchilla. Three days after the incident, he received a call from a startled guard who had witnessed the chinchilla he had been guarding (while pondering if he should start looking for alternative employment if this is what his superiors had him doing) turn into a man (which he wasn't sure was an argument for or against seeking less crazy employers). The HYDRA agent had been secured while he was still dazed from the transformation and was now awaiting questioning at the Director's leisure.

As Fury picked up the phone to inform Agent Coulson, he mused whether, by the time Phil was through with the man, the HYDRA agent would be begging to be turned back into Harry's 'soft'.


	7. Wrecked

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the hiatus. Several family issues decided to explode at once in December and things have been pretty hectic since. I hope everyone else had a better New Year than I did!  
> Enjoy the chapter while I go back to trying to wrangle the next chapter of TPLT into some sort of presentable order.

"Oh, wow," Tony said, looking around at his wrecked lab. The only illumination came from the emergency lighting strips in the ceiling and the soft glow of the arc reactor through his t-shirt. Why the arc reactor still worked when every other scrap of technology appeared to have been destroyed was something he'd ponder later; for now, he was glad he didn't have to worry about cardiac arrest on top of everything.

A tiny whimper from behind broke him out of his impressed contemplation of the wreckage of his lab. Tony turned to see a wide-eyed, upset Harry standing behind him.

"Don't cry, my tiny little human EMP bomb," the genius pleaded, rushing to pick up the tearful child."Uncle Tony isn't mad. Uncle Tony is _impressed_. Do you have any idea how hard it is to fry Stark tech? Hammer's dedicated his life to it and hasn't managed yet and you did it by accident. But Hammer's an idiot so we should probably find a better yardstick...but the point is, you are a very impressive feat of genetic engineering. Yes, you are!" Tony babbled, trying to prevent another meltdown from the kid he hadn't even realised was in his lab. "You are like a ninja. A tiny, EMP emitting ninja. Which would be scary if you didn't have the poster-boy for all that is right and just as an uncle. How did he get in here, JARVIS? JARVIS? You there, J?" he said, glancing at the ceiling - a habit he had picked up from the rest of the team even though he knew most of the AI's sensors were built into the walls, not the ceiling. Not that it mattered right now. JARVIS's systems had clearly been fried along with everything else.

That was kind of terrifying, actually. JARVIS's systems were shielded even more heavily than regular Stark tech. The AI was capable of surviving a nuclear blast without a hitch but Tony wasn't going to think about that just yet. The first priority was making sure Harry was happy and didn't have another meltdown, then he could find out what caused the first one and _then_ he could investigate Harry's abilities further. 

The sound of the lab door being forced open made him look up.

"Tony, are you ok? JARVIS said- holy crap, what happened in here?" Clint stood in the doorway gaping at the wrecked lab.

"Swear jar! Don't think you're getting out of it because J's offline. If I have to contribute to Harry's college fund you do, too, Merida," Tony said immediately (he had already set up a trust fund to pay Harry's college fees anyway, of course, but he didn't have to tell anyone else that).

"What the hell happened, Stark?"

"Does that count as swearing? Do we have a system for not-really-swears that your grandmother would tut at you for? Half price swears? Don't do it in front of the Capsicle swears?"

"Stark! What. Happened," Clint repeated impatiently, striding into the lab to take a much calmer Harry from the billionaire. "And what are you doing in here, Chick? You know we don't come into Uncle Tony's lab when he's working."

"I don't know what happened, Barton. I was working, then boom! All the lights went out and your little ninja there was standing behind me. He should spend less time with Romanoff, she's making him sneaky."

"Actually, I think he gets that from Phil. You've never been on assignment with him but he's like a freaking ghost. And he doesn't even have to sneak, he just walks in like he's supposed to be there and _no one notices_ ," Clint said, bemoaning the injustice of all the stealth training he had to go through when his husband could walk into a HYDRA base in broad daylight and nobody would look at him twice.

"Right. Weird agent marriage issues aside, because I am not giving you and Agent couple's counselling, should we be looking into how your son got into my lab in the first place?"

"Yeah," Clint said, looking down at the sleepy kid with a puzzled frown. "I put him to bed five minutes ago. How did he get down here so fast?"

"Super-speed?" Tony suggested tentatively. He hoped not. Stealthy ninja powers (that he got from Agent, how weird was that?), the ability to destroy tech just by being near it, _and_ super-speed? If the kid became a supervillain Tony would write off the freedom of mankind and offer to be the new overlord's personal R &D engineer.

Clint shrugged one shoulder, the other occupied by a dozing Harry's head. "Could be. He's shown enough powers by now that it wouldn't surprise me."

"I wonder if J got any readings before he was knocked out," Tony mused aloud, glancing up reflexively (he really had to stop that; his AI did not live in the ceiling, regardless of what the rest of the team thought). 

"You could ask him, he's still working upstairs. He's the one who told me your lab had gone dark," the archer said, shifting Harry's weight. "I'll go put Harry back to bed first."

Tony hummed noncommittally, only half paying attention as he followed Clint out of the lab, his mind whirring away trying to work out what had happened. Harry had only wiped out his lab, not the whole Tower, which was a relief. How he had done it was another matter. They usually only saw outbursts of power when Harry was excited or upset, so what had happened between Clint putting him to bed and him appearing in Tony's lab? A nightmare was the obvious answer but that didn't explain why Harry went to Tony and not Clint. Or how he got there. Super-speed was possible but if Harry had run through the Tower while upset why had only Tony's lab been wrecked? All the electronics in the corridors were still working. 

"Holy shit!" exclaimed Clint, looking into Harry's room. A room that was as wrecked as Tony's lab.

"One dollar has been deducted from your account, Agent Barton," announced a polite British voice. Clint pulled a face.

"JARVIS, you're alive! Make that two dollars, Katniss had a potty mouth downstairs," Tony said cheerfully. He smirked as Clint flipped him the bird. "Three! Rude gestures count, too. What _would_ Agent think?" he said in mock scandal. 

"I hope Rogers tries to fix your coffee machine again," the archer said resentfully.

"Now that's just mean-spirited," Tony pouted before sobering. "J, I don't suppose you got any readings before Sparky here fried your sensors?"

"I'm afraid not, sir. The energy pulses in young Master Coulson's room and your laboratory appear to have destroyed my sensors simultaneously," the AI said apologetically.

"Simultaneously?" Tony repeated, giving Clint a startled look.

"Yes, sir."

"JARVIS, was Harry in the corridor before or after the blast?"

"No, sir. To my knowledge, Master Coulson had not left his room since Agent Barton put him to bed eleven minutes ago. I was unaware he was with you until you exited the lab after the energy pulses," JARVIS reported. Tony's eyebrows shot up as he worked out what must have happened.

"Holy shit! What the fuck? How- He can't- What the actual fuck?" Tony spluttered. "He _teleported_?! He can teleport? Ho-ly shit, Legolas, your son is a miracle of science!"

"Four dollars have been deducted from your account, sir," JARVIS interrupted.

"Fuck. Wait, no! Dammit," Tony swore as JARVIS dutifully informed him another dollar had been deducted. "Goddammit, Jarvis, we have a kid breaking the laws of physics, this is not the time to worry about my language!"

"I'll let you tell Phil that when Harry starts repeating the words he hears," said Clint coming out of Harry's room, as though he wasn't equally as bad.

"But the implications for science! Bruce would understand!" Tony protested.

Clint rolled his eyes. "Then go tell Banner, don't start babbling science at me. I don't get why this is a big deal but him turning someone into a chinchilla wasn't."

"He turned someone into a chinchilla?" Tony asked in what was most certainly not a shriek. 

"Nobody told you about that?" Clint asked innocently. 

"No, nobody told me! Do you have any idea how impossible this is? The mass change alone-"

"No sciencing," Clint cut the genius off. "Find Banner if you want to science."

"Philistine," Tony pouted. Then he brightened, almost bouncing in place. "We should take Harry to the SHIELD labs," he said. "See if we can get any readings to know how he's doing all this. Is the chinchilla still around?"

"My son is not a guinea pig for the scientists to prod, Stark," Clint said, tone hard.

"Me and Bruce, observation only," Tony swore.

"Then why do you need SHIELD's labs? You have your own."

"I don't have to pay for whatever explodes if we're at SHIELD," Tony said blithely, as though he didn't make the entirety of SHIELD's annual budget in a month. "And JARVIS won't fine me every time I swear if we aren't in the Tower."

"Ha! You think Phil didn't instate a swear jar at SHIELD as soon as we started taking Harry there?" Clint scoffed. "We'll be able to buy half of Manhattan by the end of the year the way he's raking it in."

"How is Fury taking that?" Tony asked gleefully.

"He doesn't know. Hill 'misplaced' the memo to get back at him for dumping extra paperwork on her and I don't think anyone has dared tell him since," Clint grinned.

"Really?" Tony sounded delighted. "Nobody fears the big bad Director's wrath when he eventually finds out?"

"Everyone fears Hill's wrath more. She is scarily vindictive."

Ton paused, considering. That was true. Fury was fierce and threatening but Hill could make those who annoyed her suffer in unique and terrifying ways. If Fury wasn't around to keep them occupied, Tony imagined Hill and Agent would have methodically conquered the world without anyone noticing and already be halfway to ruling Asgard, too. Fortunately, Fury was around to keep them occupied and so they spent the majority of their time making sure the Avengers did not accidentally blow up in their downtime the world they fought so hard to save when working. 

The billionaire grinned as something else occurred to him.

"So Fury doesn't know that he's contributing to Agent's swear jar?"

"No."

"And nobody's going to tell him?"

"No."

"Then how is this not the perfect time to take Harry and wreck as many SHIELD labs as we can?" Tony said, smirking. 

Clint considered it.

"I'm on board as long as we don't tell Phil," he agreed eventually. 

"Excellent! I'll go get Bruce," Tony said gleefully.

A couple of weeks later they had wrecked several labs, turned the flight deck of the Helicarrier a striking shade of electric blue, and accidentally caused a security breach in the Pentagon, but they were no closer to explaining Harry's powers. Far from being frustrated, however, Tony and Bruce were invigorated by the mystery and were having the time of their lives trying to solve the puzzle that was Harry unique abilities. Harry himself didn't understand what all the fuss was about but was happy to be spending so much time with his honorary uncles in the lab, a place that was usually off-limits. It didn't hurt that at the end of the second week the two scientists presented him with his first ever bike, paid for by the good agents of SHIELD and their swear jar.


End file.
